always

for reals...

A blog about parenting teens and other things. There are a lot of "mommy blogs" out there. I love many of them. However, they aren't really applicable at this stage in our parenting. A blog about parenting teens? Now that is something I can get behind!

Although, I will say, if you are looking for advice on parenting, I can mostly offer the things I've found that DON'T work. I'm not an expert. AT. ALL . Unless we're talking about eyerolls. And then, I've got that shizzle nailed...

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Why do they insist on dinner EVERY night?!?

It's no secret that I am not now, nor have I ever been known as a "foodie". I could eat a bowl of cereal at night and call it good. (And have on many occasions!) I don't really care that much about food. I'm not adventurous in what I eat. Although I am very thankful I can eat gluten again because no gluten = hell as far as I'm concerned. For real.

But, I have other people in my house. People who are growing into adults. Therefore, they need actual food. With a balance of protein, veggies, carbs...and whatever else makes a balanced diet. Clearly, cereal doesn't exactly fit the criteria.

With Sydney having swim practice every night, I knew we needed to come
up with some way to feed her a good meal. Plus, we really try to have
dinner as a family every night if possible. We have about 40 minutes
from the time we pull in the driveway to get dinner on the table, eat,
and be out the door to take her to practice.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I don't really like to cook? Yeah, I'm super awesome like that.

BUT!!!

I found a great solution that has been working really well for our family. It's this! And it's fantastic!

The beauty of this plan for us is that you take something out of the freezer the night before, put it in the fridge overnight and then throw it in the crock-pot on low in the morning. When we get home from work...dinner! Seriously, it's that easy.

I am usually very skeptical when it comes to things like this. For
one, I wasn't sure what an ALDI was. But it's just a supermarket chain.
Secondly, we have a few (3 out of 4, ahem.) people in our house that are picky.

I was concerned about the prep time to create the meals. But, they make it so simple! The download comes complete with a printable shopping list. Plus, it has a pantry list, detailed preparation instructions, a blank calendar and recipe cards for all the recipes. I loved that the recipe cards had cooking instructions PLUS suggestions on what to serve with each meal.

Since we don't have ALDI here, I went to our trusty Winco. Syd and I
did all the shopping in about an hour. Our total came to $168.74. For 20
meals! That's less than $8.50 for a meal for 4 people. I'm sure with a little preparation and planning, I could get it to less than that, but I was pretty happy with our total.

Mark and I put the meals together in about an hour as well. Everything just goes in a freezer bag. Very little prep work, which is excellent from my point of view. It was actually a little bit fun to work together like that.

The preparation instructions were super easy to follow. Here is an example:

Photo courtesy of iamthatlady.com website.

I was also nervous that we would have things that we didn't love. Not the case at all! I was especially leery of the rib recipe, since I don't really actually like ribs, but even it was great. Go figure.

Go check out the website. Really, I don't think you will be disappointed.

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About Me

After growing up in Vancouver (not Canada), Washington (not D.C.), I moved to Boise, Idaho (not Iowa) in 1994. Met my cool husband, had a couple kids, got a dog...clearly we are the American dream. Ha!

I was a stay-at-home mom for 14 years and decided to go back to work full-time a couple years ago. What was I thinking? Just kidding, mostly. Blogging is a creative outlet for me. Something I miss when it's not happening.